HERE are three female icons, none particularly to my taste, but there's no escaping them.

One has been gone these long years, another is dead only in the controversial title of a new play, and the third, who inhabits the flashbulb-lit end of the popular spectrum, appears dead to the world.

The deceased icon continues to cause bother, the aged icon will remain a divisive figure for as long as people remember her, while the pop icon stalks the public arena mad-eyed with personal suffering.

Where would we be without Princess Diana, Baroness Thatcher and Britney Spears?

Diana has been dead for a decade, although sometimes you wouldn't know it. This has certainly been the case while the creepy and indecently salacious inquest into her death has ground on.

What purpose does this formal display of irrelevant personal trivia serve, other than to satisfy the conspiracy theories of a very rich man and to fill the front pages of national newspapers that can't be bothered to go looking for any other sort of news?

Why, each sadly bedraggled week, are friends, family members and former hangers-on trundled into court to air their often colourful theories about a famous dead woman?

Just thought I'd ask, because it puzzles me that such a farrago ever got off the ground.

If Mohamed Al Fayed, whose son, Dodi, died with Diana in that Paris tunnel, were not so fantastically wealthy, this showbiz inquest would never have happened. Instead, ten years on, we are still being assaulted by endless dubious theories about the poor woman.

I never counted myself a fan when she was alive, but, really, after all this time, can't we just let her be? It was a tragic accident, it happened, and nothing else needs to be said.

If we can't shake Diana from our minds, however hard we try, Margaret Thatcher is a diminished figure to some extent, but only because age has pushed her to the margins.

The former Prime Minister has been brought back to our attention this week thanks to a play called The Death Of Margaret Thatcher, which is to run at a London theatre next month. This was an occurrence once so wished for, at least by the singer-songwriter Elvis Costello, that he wrote a song about it, called Tramp The Dirt Down.

Part of the lyric ran as follows: "When they finally put you in the ground/I'll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down."

Well, I didn't like her much myself, but I never took it quite that far. Baroness Thatcher is too frail to play a part in political life these days, yet she is still hymned by some. Well, Norman Tebbit, at least.

When asked about the new work by playwright Tom Green, Lord Tebbit delivered the expected harrumph, saying: "He would have been better to write a play called The Life Of Margaret Thatcher which called for her to be reinstated at Number 10."

No, Norman, that's a nightmare too far. Some of us have only just got over the first coming of Margaret Thatcher.

As for brittle, embattled Britney, well, I don't understand the intense media interest in her at all. Her plight is of no interest to me - yet am I alone in this?

Our national newspapers run pages and pages about her apparent disintegration, dwelling on every sorry detail, swerving between prurient interest in her downwards journey, and then offering occasional succour in the form of supportive emails from readers.

One chin-up email in the Sun came from "Whodat" of Brighton, who wrote: "Crash at mine for a few weeks I'm sure you'll have a fab time. Even my girlfriend said you should come"

Britney has become a product, a brand, rather than a person, a cynical way to sell newspapers (yet, oddly, people do seem to be entranced by her car-crash life).

A similar bruised icon fate long ago befell Princess Diana, who is now so wrapped in sentiment, myth, gossip and conspiratorial rumour that the real woman has long been lost.

Strange, in conclusion, to note the way in which it is nearly always women, of whatever complexion, complexity or otherwise, who are adopted as tarnished icons.